Transport and Communications

Abstract

Government has generally been involved more intimately in the provision of means of transport and communication than in agriculture or industry, at any rate until quite recently; and if not in its provision, then at least in its regulation. As a consequence, there is usually more statistical material available from the past than on most other subjects except external trade. Shipping was a matter of close concern to all major maritime powers. The railways were of obvious military as well as economic importance and were under government surveillance if not control from the beginning, even in Britain-something made easier by their need for government help in securing rights of way. Civil aviation was similarly controlled for a variety of reasons. Postal services were long recognised as a government function, though nowhere organised on modern lines until Hill’s example of the penny post in the United Kingdom in 1840. Telegraphs fell naturally into the same niche, where they were not simply an adjunct of the railways. Telephones generally followed, except in some of the smaller countries, where they were pioneered by foreign (mostly American) private enterprise. In Europe, unlike North America, the potential social influence of radio led to its direct control by governments, to a consequent desire to find finance from users of radio services, and hence to the almost universal use, up to the 1960s at least and usually later, of licencing systems which produced a useful statistical byproduct. The principal absentees from this list of government influence are inland navigation and road transport, which remain, in market economies at any rate, the fields about which least data are available.